Australia news live: poll puts One Nation ahead of Labor; free public transport ends in Victoria

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation now the most popular political party in the country, Redbridge Group/Accent Research poll suggests. Follow today’s news live Shadow treasurer says Coalition still major player amid stagnant polling Tim Wilson, the shadow treasurer, said the Coalition needed to be “better” in light of the One Nation polling, but said any notion the opposition was now a minor party was “cute”, but untrue. What Australians are right now is despairing of the state of this government. … We need to be better and make sure that we clearly communicate to the Australian community what we’re going to do. But I’m absolutely convinced that, not just we will be here in the next parliament, but we will go on to win. … I think there’s a chunk of voters who are just going into the orange paddock of despair because there’s a lot of noise and attention there, but we need to actually make it clear where we want to take the country. There’ll be a million polls between now and the election day, which will determine future government. I think we all understand that households are under enormous pressure right now. They have been for a period of time. We saw even before the war in Iran that our economy was pretty hot, building a lot of price pressures in the system, but that’s been greatly aggravated by the impact of this war in Iran. So I think you see that in the polls, you see it in private research. Continue reading...